1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to meat processing and, more particularly, to an improved method and apparatus for cutting animal carcasses into smaller segments.
2. Description of the Related Art
It has been estimated that the beef processing industry suffers from over 10 billion dollars a year in efficiencies, with 3-4 billion dollars of that waste arising in the slaughter houses and packing plants. In a conventional packing house operation, animals are slaughtered, their hides are removed, and the resultant dressed carcass is hung in a storage cooler for subsequent cutting. During the cutting operation, the carcass is manually segmented by skilled workers into primary cuts. For instance, the primary cuts of beef are the shank, the round, the rump, the sirloin, the loin, the flank, the rib, the chuck, the plate, the brisket, and the shoulder. These primary cuts are then further segmented, i.e., cut and trimmed, for sale to consumers. This primary cutting operation is time consuming and labor intensive, requiring a number of highly skilled butchers to manually segment each carcass.
On any particular day, the manner in which the primary cuts are made will vary depending upon the selling price that day for each primary cut. For example, the price of a loin or shoulder cut might vary a few cents per pound per day. When the price of a loin cut is high, the primary cut is positioned to maximize the weight of the loin. However, when the price of a shoulder cut is high, the primary cut is positioned to maximize the weight of the shoulder. Although the cuts made by the butchers are not consistently accurate to produce the most effective yield, because carcasses vary in size and build, and because primal cuts are not defined by any precise symmetry, no automated butchering system exhibits more accuracy than butchers.
Although automated butchering systems do not segment carcasses as accurately as their human counterparts, a packing house may, nonetheless, use automated butchering systems to prevent backlog and to streamline their operations. Different automated butchering systems require varying amounts of human interaction. For instance, several automated butchering systems have been developed wherein knives and other cutting implements, mechanically controlled by an operator, segment a carcass as it moves along a conveyor belt. Although cutting systems of this type have, to some extent, decreased the total man-hours required by skilled butchers, the greater accuracy achieved by the manual cut has been sacrificed. For example, an operator manually controlling an automated cutting blade is, by necessity, positioned at some distance from the carcass to be cut as the carcass moves between various cutting stations. Because a difference of only 1.25 inches in the position of a cut may have an appreciable effect upon the total value realized from the various primary cuts, the packing houses have been faced with balancing the profit lost due to inaccurate cuts against the profit gained due to greater operator efficiency.
In an effort to reduce operator intervention and to provide greater cutting accuracy, external vision systems, such as television cameras and photo sensors, have been employed to optically scan moving carcasses and to store in memory specific physical characteristics derived from the optical scanning procedure. The information stored in memory is used to control automated cutting tools which make the primary cuts. For instance, in one automated carcass cutting system, a carcass is hung on an overhead conveyor and the primary cuts are marked by a skilled cut specialist. The marks for the various cuts designate both the cut direction and the angle of cut, and the markings are made in colors which radiate particular frequencies when scanned with a light-sensitive scanner. When a detector senses that the carcass is in the proper position, it triggers a video scanning camera to rapidly scan the complete carcass. The scanning camera is filtered by a red filter so that the red meat, white fat, and bone appear the same color. However, the markings on the carcass radiate different frequencies and, therefore, are sensed by the camera. The data retrieved from the video camera is stored in a memory and used to control motor driven knifes when the carcass moves from the scanning station to the cutting station.
While this system relieves butchers from the burden of manually cutting carcasses, it still requires skilled cutting specialists to mark each of the carcasses using a proper color code. Thus, the accuracy of the cut is limited by the accuracy of the color-coded markings on the surface of the carcass and by the limited maneuverability of motor driven knives. Moreover, motor driven knives require frequent replacement, especially when required to cut through bone as well as chilled or frozen flesh.
The present invention is directed to overcoming, or at least minimizing, one or more of the problems set forth above.